And then there’s the subscription model. Where you don’t own or even license software. You just continually pay rent.
Not just software anymore, increasingly physical products too thanks to the whole IoT nonsense where every appliance you buy has to connect to the manufacturer to work now.
Yeah, that part is super fucked up. I have IoT in my ceiling fans. I had to call their support line to have them remotely turn off the beeping that accompanies a button press.
The feature can’t be deactivated locally. I literally had to have my ceiling fan join my Wi-Fi network so that support could remote in and disable a beep that no one could possibly want.
Oh yeah, my oven has Wi-Fi. What possible reason could there be for my oven to have network access? It’s beyond ridiculous.
Crazy how we’re basically losing the right to personal property under late stage capitalism.
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This dynamic illustrates how capitalism goes through different stages. Early on, companies compete on quality trying to attract customers with better products, and you end up with quality things that work well, last a long time, and so on. However, eventually you get to the point where the same volumes of the product are no longer needed, and that’s when you start seeing things like planned obsolescence creep in because the logic of capitalism is that you have to keep selling and growing indefinitely.
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I very much agree, this is just a crazy period we have to live through, but sanity will return.
